Adaptive Digital Frequency Synthesizer With Ultra-Fine Ring-Oscillator Tuning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing wireless power transmission systems face challenges in maintaining high power transfer efficiency and accuracy due to sensitivity to distance, alignment, environmental changes, and component drifts, with current digital frequency synthesizers offering limited resolution and increased power consumption and silicon area.
Innovation Solution
A high-resolution adaptive digital frequency synthesizer IC with a digitally controlled tunable ring-oscillator, counter-comparator unit, and adaptive Fractional-N dithering module, which generates high-resolution output signals with fine time resolution and variable duty-cycle, reducing power consumption and silicon area while compensating for system variations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If digital frequency synthesizers are used for WPT systems, then design efforts and integration are improved, but frequency resolution is limited due to time-resolution constraints of several hundreds of pico-seconds
Solution Approach 1:
The frequency synthesis process is segmented into multiple stages: a ring oscillator generates a base frequency, a counter divides it down, and a delay line provides fine-resolution frequency adjustment. This segmentation allows each component to operate within its optimal resolution range, achieving overall high frequency resolution while maintaining digital integration benefits.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a time-delay dimension to the frequency synthesis process by incorporating a delay line component. This additional temporal dimension allows for fine frequency resolution beyond what standard digital counters can achieve, effectively adding a new degree of freedom to the frequency control mechanism.
2Measurement precision
If ring oscillator with delay line cells is used to achieve high-resolution frequency synthesis, then frequency resolution is improved, but power consumption and silicon area increase
Solution Approach 1:
The delay line is designed to be dynamically controllable, allowing the system to adjust the number of delay stages activated based on the required frequency resolution. This dynamic operation enables high resolution when needed while consuming minimal power during normal operation, resolving the contradiction between resolution and power consumption.
3Adaptability or versatility
If frequency tuning by maximum power point tracking is used, then flexibility in power regulation is improved, but system dynamics become slow and overall efficiency degrades
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary frequency calibration and tuning before power transfer operations begin. By pre-establishing the optimal operating frequency and resonance conditions, the system avoids slow real-time adjustments during operation, thereby maintaining both flexibility and fast dynamics simultaneously.
Data Source
AI summary
A high-resolution adaptive digital frequency synthesizer Integrated Circuit (IC) for wireless power systems, which comprises a digitally controlled tunable ring-oscillator, based on a chain of delay-line cells (DLs) being adapted to generate an internal high-resolution reference clock signal; a tuner unit for receiving as input a compensation/target signal and performing arithmetic operations that produce auxiliary tuning signals provided to the ring-oscillator, for allowing the ring-oscillator to generate a high-resolution output period/frequency; a counter-comparator unit introducing an additional delay to the chain, the counter-comparator unit operating in combination with the ring-oscillator and counts how many times the delay of the chain repeats, for providing ultra-fine tuning signal for tuning the frequency resolution of digitally controlled ring-oscillator; an adaptive Fractional-N dithering module, for enhancing the frequency resolution of the digitally controlled ring-oscillator by averaging the resolution provided by a single delay-line cell of the ring-oscillator.